Page 27 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
Just as she reached the end of the hallway, something heavy hit her from behind.
She staggered, but didn’t fall because she was caught.
And held.
And turned around by a pair of huge, strangling tight hands wrapped around her arms.
Eliana stared up into Demetrius’s eyes. Black and wild, they burned down at her with the lucid incandescence of rage, and she knew this was the end. She braced herself for it, stiffening, ready for the snap of her neck or a knife through her ribs or a gun barrel shoved into her mouth.
And then a thought flashed through her mind, horrifying in its treacherous clarity:
I remember exactly how you taste.
Then the man who murdered her father leaned in close and growled, “Gotcha!”
As he’d been doing for the past hour, Leander stood, unmoving and silent, gazing out the tall, lead-paned windows of the East Library. Flanked by heavy silk drapes drawn back with tasseled ties, they offered a spectacular view of the rolling green expanse of lawn, the groomed rosemary hedges, the plashing marble fountain of Triton in the middle of the manicured gardens. Far beyond the boundaries of Sommerley Manor the dark line of the forest began, rolling hills dense with hardwoods and fir that went on for miles. It was beautiful today, warm and sunny, the air scented softly with the beds of lavender and garden roses planted beneath the windows. The sky above was a perfect, cloudless blue; the white falcon stood out against it like a swiftly moving star.
She was still high, but getting closer. Impatience cramped his stomach. He checked his watch.
Ten minutes. Perhaps twenty.
Unless she changed her mind, that is. His lips lifted to a wry smile. There was always the possibility she would change her mind. He clasped his hands behind his back and looked up again, subsiding back into himself with the patience of one accustomed to waiting.
From behind him a terse voice said, “We have a problem.”
Leander turned. His younger brother, Christian, stood at the open door. Second in authority only to him—the Alpha of the English colony and the head of the Council of Alphas—Christian was both brother and trusted confidant. He knew all the secrets, sat in on all the meetings, offered opinions and got things done. Over the past three years, he’d been an invaluable asset to the tribe as they struggled to adjust to the staggering shocks of discovering a new colony of their kin in Rome, discovering the leader of their ancient enemy, the Expurgari, was in fact one of their own kind, and finally discovering he’d been killed, but not before his two children had escaped with a group of rebels. Which is why most of the tribe had been moved to the colony in Brazil. It was the only colony the Expurgari still had not discovered.
Only a few were left at Sommerley. Jenna—I’m never hiding again, Leander—would not be moved.
Christian was known as a fixer of broken things. A problem solver. So his opening line was more than a little worrying. And so was his posture: taut as a bowstring, wound tight enough to snap.
“A problem?” repeated Leander. “Which is?”
Christian dragged a hand through his dark hair. An unconscious habit, Leander knew, and one that meant he was trying to choose his words carefully.
“Christian,” Leander prompted quietly, an imperative.
“The daughter—the missing princess of the Roman colony—she’s been taken!” he blurted.
The relief that poured through Leander was sweet and surprisingly intense. He hadn’t realized until just then how much he’d been dreading this moment, when someone would come and tell him that one of the rebel children of the dead leader of the Expurgari had done something terrible, wiped out an entire colony, murdered the women and children in their sleep. He wasn’t a religious man, but he almost crossed himself.
“Thank God.”
He walked to the polished cherry sideboard and took up one of the heavy glasses displayed on a silver tray with cut crystal decanters filled with amber and gold liquids. He removed the round stopper and was about to pour himself a generous measure of scotch when Christian said, “No, Leander—she wasn’t taken by us.”
Leander froze. The decanter became a sudden dead weight in his hand.
Carefully, he set it back on the silver tray along with the glass. He turned back to Christian and stared at him. Same dark hair. Same piercing green eyes. Same dusky coloring all the Ikati of his colony shared.
All the Ikati except one, that is. Jenna, his Queen, was pale as alabaster.
His first thought—always—was of her. Her safety was the only thing that mattered.
She wasn’t taken by us.
“You have exactly five seconds, Christian, to tell me what the hell you’re talking about.”
Christian moved from the door into the ivory and gilt opulence of the library. Radiating strain, he came and stood at the end of the sideboard. Even his voice was strained when he said, “Someone else was there. The Hunt found her at the police station, but someone else got there first, set off explosives as a diversion, went in and got her out. Whoever it was killed one of the assassins. Almost killed the rest. But he got away…with the princess.”
